Vesper 30,225 Posted October 26, 2024 Share Posted October 26, 2024 Roasted pumpkin and green sauce Serves 4 Pumpkin is often served just on its own, but the flavours are enhanced when it is tarted up with an easy, punchy green sauce. Ingredients 1 x 1kg pumpkin or a mix of pumpkin and squash, cut into wedges 2 tbsp olive oil 1 garlic bulb Salt and pepper 4 fresh rosemary sprigs For the sauce 15g mint, finely chopped 15g parsley, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped 2 tbsp capers, finely chopped 2 tbsp cider vinegar 1 tsp Dijon mustard 1 tbsp olive oil Squeeze of lemon juice Method 1. Preheat the oven to 180C fan/gas 6. Toss the pumpkin in the olive oil and put on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Break up the garlic bulb and add to the tray. Season well. Scatter the rosemary on top and roast for 30 minutes. 2. To make the sauce, put the mint, parsley, garlic and capers in a bowl and mix. Add half the vinegar and the mustard. Mix and slowly add the oil, then the lemon juice. Taste and add more vinegar if necessary. Serve spooned over the pumpkin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted October 26, 2024 Share Posted October 26, 2024 Feta and mozzarella cachapas with honey and lime Keep an eye out for the Insta-worthy cheese pull on these Venezuelan corn pancakes that are often sold at roadside food stands. They’re usually made with fresh corn, but I’ve used frozen corn for ease; if you’d prefer to use fresh, just stand the husk up on a board and shave off the kernels with a big, sharp knife; don’t use tinned sweetcorn here, though, because it’s far too wet. If you like, make the pancakes and the cheese mixture up to 24 hours ahead, ready for stuffing the following day. Method Put all the batter ingredients in a blender, add a teaspoon of flaky salt and blitz smooth. Transfer to a bowl, cover with a tea towel and set aside for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, put the two cheeses, spring onions, jalapeño and crushed coriander seeds in a bowl and mix well. Put a medium, 18cm frying pan on a medium heat and, once hot, brush it with a little oil. Ladle in about 120ml of the batter, swirl the pan so the batter covers the base, then cook for three to four minutes, until the top is set and the bottom is deeply golden. Carefully flip over using a spatula, cook for another minute, then transfer to a large tray and repeat with the remaining batter, adding more oil to the pan as required. Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Put roughly 90g of the filling into one half of each pancake, fold over, return to the tray, then bake for 10 minutes, until the cheese has melted. Finely grate the lime zest over the tops of the pancakes, then drizzle over the honey. Sprinkle a pinch of flaky salt on top, cut the zested lime into wedges and serve alongside the pancakes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted October 26, 2024 Share Posted October 26, 2024 Clase Azul, which makes some of the finest tequila in Mexico, released the fourth instalment of its extremely limited edition collection: Música. An anejo tequila aged for 26 months, it has aromas of peat smoke, honey, nutmeg and plum. There are only 10,000 bottles in the world – run don’t walk. Clase Azul Tequila Día de Muertos Edición Limitada https://claseazul.com/clase-azul-family/clase-azul-dia-de-muertos-24 Música In Mexico, Día de Muertos is a celebration where the sublime and the festive come together to honor the memory of those who are no longer with us. #ClaseAzulLimitedEdition Clase Azul Tequila Día de Muertos Limited Edition Música captures the vibrant and mystical atmosphere of this tradition’s music to share it with the entire world. Nuestros Recuerdos This is the fourth installment of Nuestros Recuerdos, an annual series of five limited-edition creations dedicated to the most exquisite aspects of Día de Muertos. For this limited edition, our Master Distiller has crafted an exquisite, 26-month extra añejo tequila, aged in American whiskey casks and finished in casks of Scotch whisky. Decanter The decanter for this limited edition, with its deep plum color, embodies the soft and calming cadence of Día de Muertos melodies. On the back of the base, an illustration in golden and lilac hues depicts an eclectic musical ensemble parading to the sound of traditional instruments, reflecting the diverse musical traditions of this festivity. Ornament The front of the decanter features a 24-karat gold-plated ornament with a fine patina finish, brought to life as a jovial, accordion-playing Catrina dancing to her own music. This moveable artisanal piece was handcrafted at the Milagros de Latón artisan workshop in Tesistán, Jalisco. A highly intricate work, it is composed of almost 40 individual parts cast from 10 separate molds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted October 29, 2024 Share Posted October 29, 2024 Farewell, double IPA RIP, double IPA https://www.themanual.com/food-and-drink/farewell-double-ips/ Here lies the double IPA, gone but not forgotten. Born in the mid-90s in California, the colossal beer enjoyed years of popularity, adored by hop-heads, before finally falling into the shadow of other trends. The double IPA is survived by its leaner offspring, the traditional IPA, the hazy IPA, and the West Coast IPA. Beers like Pliny the Elder and Stone’s Ruination made the style famous. At the time, it seemed like the next logical step for the IPA—bigger, bolder, more colossal. The IPA had won people over with its combination of bitterness and might, so why not take it to the next level? During its heyday, the double IPA drew ravenous crowds. Beer bars fought over Pliny, and lines formed around the block when the keg was tapped. People could not get enough. And, impressively, this was before most breweries took to social media to tout their special releases. Some brewers called them double IPAs, some called them imperial IPAs, but the reaction was pretty much the same: pure glee among craft enthusiasts. The downfall of a giant The double IPA may have been too intense for its own good. Not that there aren’t tasty options (the two above, for example, and the extraordinary Sticky Hands by Block 15 Brewing), but something tends to happen when an IPA goes double. The raised malt bill, made to balance out the added hoppy notes, can overwhelm. There can be a candy-sweet characteristic to the beer despite through-the-roof IBU numbers. Richness can overshadow all those wonderful piney, woodsy, vegetal hop notes. It’s done in the name of balance, but the scales tend to tip the wrong way. And this is to say nothing of the recent movements, which care not for the double IPA. Young imbibers prefer lower-alcohol beers like lagers and session IPAs. Countless options have flooded the market, from hard seltzers and hard teas to RTD cocktails. Lighter drinks like the spritz have ascended to god-like status (and not just because of shows like White Lotus). Oh, and then there’s the wellness trend, and more and more people are exploring the NA sector, which has improved dramatically over the last couple of years. In fact, there’s never been a better time to crack a good non-alcoholic beer. This kind of backdrop doesn’t leave much room for beefy IPAs (remember triple IPAs?). Those hops are going elsewhere, from hop waters to cider infusions. Palates seem to be more refined these days, but that’s not a bad thing. We’re after delicacy and subtlety, whether in the form of a nuanced high-elevation wine or terroir-driven gin. Plus, with climate change and a hotter planet, reaching for a double IPA can be challenging, at least in the midst of a record-breaking summer heat wave. Alas, there’s hope. A comeback story? While it seems like the double IPA’s best days are behind it, this writer believes there’s a chance at a second coming. Just as there are trends working against the beer style, there are trends that bode well for the hefty beer, from a focus on local grains and malts to new hop hybrids that stand up to the raised alcohol content. Brewers are nailing beers made with new hop incarnations, and some could work really well with more intense IPAs. We certainly still love big. That’s about as American as anything gets. Just look at the stovepipe can and our collective obsession with giant hats, giant cars, giant tumblers—giant everything. And we love a good pairing, from wine and seafood to Scotch and cheese. The extra weight a double IPA carries could do wonder if teamed up with the right food. Wine-tasting rooms have gone the culinary route, treating their wines to complementary nibbles. Beer could do the same, offering flights of their offerings in-house, paired up with corresponding foods. The right bite—a salty cured meat, an extra-cheesy pasta or pizza, a spicy curry—could take the sting out of the alcohol and play off the richness of the malt backbone. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA as much as the next craft enthusiast. But beer has to look in the mirror at the moment, like a lot of industries, and some evolution will be in order if the double IPA is to remain intact. The beer will always be a bit of an outlier, but it will still have to grow to retain relevancy. If the double IPA is to walk into the sunset, it had a great run. If it’s to make something of a comeback, I’ll welcome such a thing, although it’s probably going to have to be a different animal. So farewell for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted October 30, 2024 Share Posted October 30, 2024 THE RESTAURANT Buster’s The team behind award-winning Clapham restaurant Ploussard and cult fried-chicken outfit Other Side Fried have launched a third concept. Opening in Brixton this week, Buster’s burger bar sees the pair go from poultry to prime cuts, with a menu that champions simplicity, flavour and top-tier ingredients such as Welsh wagyu. Buster's burgers will be cooked medium and served in a homemade potato roll, alongside locally brewed beers and pet nat by the glass. We can’t wait to try the cheeseburger, which features a wagyu beef patty, American cheese, green peppercorn dijonnaise and a buttered potato roll. Visit BustersLondon.co.uk HAMBURGER BAR Traditional hamburgers, French fries & pet-nat. Monday - Sunday | 12 - 11pm 3 Atlantic road, London, SW8 8HX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted October 30, 2024 Share Posted October 30, 2024 (edited) What To Do In London This Weekend 30.10.24 Wondering what to do with your downtime? SLMan has you covered. From a Halloween supper club to a breakfast bap collab, here’s what to get stuck into… https://slman.com/culture/whats-on/what-to-do-this-weekend-301024 Check Out This New Store Gandys Covent Garden’s appeal as a hub for independent fashion has grown again with the opening of a Gandys store. Founded by brothers Rob and Paul in a Brixton flat after they survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Gandys has since collaborated with big names like Liberty of London, McLaren and The Rolling Stones. Offering sturdy travel clothing, durable backpacks and accessories, the brand’s new store also furthers its mission to support disadvantaged children worldwide through educational projects. 66 Neal Street, Covent Garden, WC2H 9PA Visit GandysInternational.com Start The Weekend Off Right Bangers X Kold Sauce For your breakfast bap, is it ketchup or brown sauce? This November it might be neither. Kold Sauce has teamed up with brekkie hotspot Bangers on a limited-edition dish available for one month only. Inspired by a greasy-spoon staple, the sandwich contains glazed ham, fried egg, grilled pineapple, fresh crips and lashings of Kold’s Burnt Pineapple Hot Pepper sauce. If you can’t get enough, the condiment will be available to buy on DELLI while stocks last. 5 Leonard Circus, Shoreditch, EC2A 4DQ; from 1st November Visit BangersLondon.co.uk & KoldSauce.com Celebrate Halloween Close Ties X Chef Naz Hassan Billed as a ‘wine rave’, Close Ties is the brainchild of Carousel’s Joshua Brat and Trullo’s Jake Norman. The collab upends the status quo of traditional supper clubs to offer guests a new experience of ‘beats and bites’. Attendees are encouraged to get on the dancefloor while enjoying dishes from guest chefs and pours of low-intervention wines. This Friday 1st November, Naz Hassan – previously of Crispin and Pidgin – will be in the kitchen, paying homage to his Bengali and Milanese heritage. The evening will kick off with a complimentary champagne happy hour, featuring Moët and canapés from Naz. Then there’s Bengali spiced lobster and prawn rolls, beef kosha tacos, tuna pucka and more. On the decks will be Secretsundaze, Soft Touch and other Close Ties resident DJs – including Jake Norman himself. Tickets on the door are £13 and Halloween dress-up is encouraged, with free tequila shots for killer costumes. Shoreditch Arts Club, 6 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, E2 7DD Follow @Close_Ties_ Get A Health Check-Up The Liver Clinic After a weekend of indulgence, you might be more aware of your liver than usual. Not only does this vital organ filter out toxins, it also plays a crucial role in boosting immunity and converting glucose into stored starch. This makes it all the more important to keep your liver in top shape. The Liver Clinic’s new flagship location at John Bell & Croyden offers a cutting-edge FibroScan Liver Scan. This non-invasive and painless procedure takes just 15 minutes, providing you with expert advice and instant results from the clinic’s knowledgeable team. John Bell & Croyden, 50-54 Wigmore Street, Marylebone, W1U 2AU Visit TheLiverClinic.Com Book Ahead Wildmoor Whiskey Supper Club Fancy swapping the grey skies of London for the lush greenery of the Scottish Highlands? Wildmoor, the high-aged Scotch whisky from heritage drinks company William Grant & Sons, is hosting a series of wild supper clubs led by chef William Hamer. Celebrating the Scottish wilderness and its bounty, Hamer will prepare a multi-course feast over an open flame on the shores of Loch Fyne in Argyll – just an hour's drive from Glasgow. Everything will be paired with Wildmoor whiskies. And no need to worry about the unpredictable Scottish weather, as dining will take place in the Wild Kabn Kitchen, a Victorian greenhouse on the historic Ardkinglas estate. Tickets are £135 each. Ardkinglas House, Ardkinglas, Cairndow, Argyll, PA26 8BG; Friday 15th November Visit WildKabnKitchenPriavteSupper.As.Me Get A Culture Fix Definitely Maybe: A View From Within Lands Exhibition You might have heard, Oasis are back together and touring. Even if you didn't get tickets, there’s an exhibition at the Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green which is free to attend. It features the photography of Michael Spencer Jones, who made the cover photographs for the band’s first three albums, Definitely Maybe, Morning Glory and Be Here Now. The exhibition also includes many famous images and previously unseen snaps of the band. Town Hall Hotel, Until 24th January Visit TownHallHotel.com Edited October 30, 2024 by Vesper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 5, 2024 Share Posted November 5, 2024 Elusive but everywhere Everything in the Universe, from wandering turtles to falling rocks, is surrounded by ‘fields’ that guide and direct movement https://aeon.co/essays/a-new-field-theory-reveals-the-hidden-forces-that-guide-us A green sea turtle in the ocean off Hawaii. Photo by Michael Riffle/Getty Why do rocks fall? Before Isaac Newton introduced his revolutionary law of gravity in 1687, many natural scientists and philosophers thought that rocks fell because falling was an essential part of their nature. For Aristotle, seeking the ground was an intrinsic property of rocks. The same principle, he argued, also explained why things like acorns grew into oak trees. According to this explanation, every physical object in the Universe, from rocks to people, moved and changed because it had an internal purpose or goal. Modern science has rejected this ‘teleological’ way of thinking. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists and philosophers began to chip away at Aristotle’s seemingly ‘spooky’ notion of intrinsic causes – spooky because they suggested that rocks and creatures were guided by something not entirely material. For those who rejected these Aristotelean explanations, such as Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes, organisms were simply complex machines animated by mechanisms. ‘Life is but a motion of limbs,’ wrote Hobbes in his Leviathan (1651). ‘For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body.’ The heart does not have the goal of circulating blood. It’s just a spring like any other. For many thinkers at the time, this view had real explanatory benefits because they knew something about how machines worked, including how to fix them. It was in this intellectual environment that Newton developed a powerful mechanical worldview, based on his discovery of gravitational fields. In a Newtonian universe, internal purpose doesn’t cause rocks to fall. They just fall, following a law of nature. Mechanistic explanations, however, struggled to explain how life develops. How does a grass seed become a blade of grass, in the face of endless disturbances from its environment? Long after the mechanistic revolution, the philosopher Immanuel Kant confronted the stubborn problem of teleology and despaired. In 1790, he wrote in the Critique of Judgment that – as commonly paraphrased – ‘there will never be a Newton for a blade of grass.’ Less than a century later, with the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin seemed to crack the problem of biological teleology. Darwin’s ideas about natural selection appeared to explain how organisms, from grass seeds to bats, were able to pursue goals. The directing process was blind variation and the selective retention of favourable variants. Bats who sought moths and had an ever-improved capacity to track and catch them were favoured over those who were less goal directed and therefore had lesser capabilities. Though natural selection seemed to illuminate what Descartes, Hobbes and Kant could not, Darwin’s theory answered only half the problem of teleology. Selection explained where teleological systems like moth-seeking bats come from but didn’t answer how they find their goals. So, how do goal-directed entities do it, moment by moment? How does an acorn seek its adult form? How does a homing torpedo find its target? Mechanistic thinking struggles to answer these questions. From a mechanical perspective, these systems look strangely future oriented. A sea turtle, hundreds of miles out to sea, can find the beach where it was born, a location that lies in its future. A developing embryo, without any thought of the future, constructs tissues and organs that it will not need until much later in life. And both do these things persistently: carried off course by a strong current, the sea turtle persistently finds a trajectory back toward its natal beach; despite errors in cell division and gene expression, an embryo is able to make corrections as it grows into its adult form. How is this possible? Even though mechanistic thinking has failed to solve this teleological problem, it still dominates scientific thought. Today, we invoke mechanism to explain almost everything – including human goal-directed behaviour. To explain the growth of an acorn, we look to mechanisms in its genes. To explain the ocean voyages of a sea turtle, we look to mechanisms in its brain. And to explain our own thoughts and decisions, we focus on neural pathways and brain chemistry to explain decision-making. We explain behaviour in terms of evolutionary needs, such as survival or reproductive success. We may even think of our genes as ‘blueprints’. For some 20th-century thinkers, such as the US psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, human brains are purely mechanistic. Skinner denied that people have goals at all. More recently, the primatologist Robert Sapolsky, based at Stanford University, and others have painted a mechanistic picture of us that denies we have free will. We seem to have only two ways of explaining it: teleology or mechanism. Both are troublesome. Both are inadequate And yet, despite centuries of rejection, teleology has not been banished. Most of us still have a deep intuition that there is more to our thinking and action than mere mechanisms. The feeling of being in love isn’t just the mechanical outcome of neurochemistry. We want to believe it is driven by our wants and intentions. Some of us, especially if moved by religious or spiritual impulses, might even see goals in the larger universe: ‘I am here for a purpose,’ you might think to yourself. For many, a world of pure mechanism seems insufficient. And beyond our intuitions about teleology, there are countless areas of science where teleological explanations are commonly deployed, even without any explicit recognition of them. Consider the debate over which parts of a genome are ‘functional’ (ie, they perform roles that are beneficial to an organism) and which are ‘non-functional’ (ie, useless remnants of evolution). The very idea that a gene can either be functional or non-functional implies that certain genes aim towards certain results, or have certain purposes for the organism, while others have no ends and are merely purposeless junk. So, even beyond our intuitions, teleology is so deeply entwined with science that there will be no getting rid of it anytime soon. So, caught between modern science and our intuitions about teleology, we seem to have only two ways of explaining the apparent goal directedness in some systems: teleology or mechanism. Both are troublesome. Both are inadequate. In recognition of this problem, philosophers of biology and others have, in recent decades, been struggling to find an alternative. We believe we have found it: a third way that reconciles Aristotelian thinking about goal directedness with the mechanistic view of a Newtonian universe. This alternative explains the apparent seeking of all goal-directed entities, from developing acorns and migrating sea turtles to self-driving cars and human intentions. It proposes that a hidden architecture connects these entities. It even explains falling rocks. We call it ‘field theory’. The notion of ‘fields’ was originally developed by physicists such as Newton, Michael Faraday, Richard Feynman and others. In physics, the concept has been used to explain gravity, electromagnetism, and particle interactions in quantum theory. But fields have also been used in biology to explain the development of living things. In the mid-20th century, the Austrian biologist Paul Weiss proposed that, within an embryo, large ‘morphogenetic fields’ directed the behaviour of cells inside them. Together, these pioneers in physics and biology showed how objects in the Universe can be directed by often-invisible and large-scale external structures. Our version of field theory takes this as its starting point. So what do fields do? How do they give us goal directedness? To answer this, we need to know something about what it means to seek a goal. Two mid-20th-century thinkers, the biologist Gerd Sommerhoff and the philosopher of science Ernest Nagel, made a simple observation about goal-directed objects: they all exhibit the same pattern of deviation and correction. When they inevitably deviate from the right trajectory – the right path toward a goal – these objects correct themselves, and direct themselves back toward their goal. A mouse embryo can be split in half at an early stage, and each half will regrow into a fully formed mouse. A person headed out to buy something can be diverted by another errand, but afterward redirect themselves toward the store. Sommerhoff and Nagel called this ability to recover from perturbations ‘persistence’. The second signature behaviour of goal-directed entities is plasticity, the ability to find a trajectory toward a goal from a wide range of starting points. A sea turtle seeking the Florida beach where it was born can begin its journey from anywhere within a wide area, stretching hundreds of miles. A self-driving car can find its destination from almost anywhere. Persistence and plasticity are the common features that all goal-directed entities seem to share. And they point to the central problem of teleology: how do goal-directed entities persistently and plastically find their way toward a target that lies only in their future? How do they know which way to go? After all, the future cannot direct the past. What sort of strange causal chain is at work here? These fields are not metaphorical. They are real and physical The answer involves looking away from goal-directed entities, and instead considering what surrounds them. In our view, persistence and plasticity are possible because goal-directed entities – from turtles to self-driving cars – move and change within a larger field that envelops and directs them. Sea turtles, for example, are enveloped by Earth’s magnetic field and can use this field to find the beach where they were born. To make this journey, they rely on complex mechanisms in their brains, but also on a larger field that, from a turtle’s perspective, appears everywhere. If a current carries a turtle off course, the field is there to direct it back toward the right beach. Likewise for self-driving cars. Each car is immersed in a microwave field emanating from nearby cell-tower arrays and can use that field to locate its destination from anywhere within range of those towers. If forced to make a detour, the microwave field directs the car back toward its destination. Our proposal is that fields direct the action of all goal-directed entities. In other words, goal directedness is the result of a particular architecture, a particular arrangement of large fields that contain and guide smaller entities. From this perspective, persistence and plasticity are possible only because a field is present wherever an entity wanders. In field theory, fields are defined in terms of what the biologist Michael Levin calls ‘nonlocality’. They are structures whose influence extends over a broad area, not localised to any one point. Earth’s magnetic field is present not just locally, where the sea turtle happens to be at one moment, but wherever the turtle could accidentally wander. Our understanding of fields is even broader. It includes atmospheric fields that direct the formation of hurricanes, ecological fields that direct the migration of animal herds, and social fields that, to some extent, guide our wants and intentions. These fields are not metaphorical. They are real and physical. They can be detected, measured, and even manipulated. Today, the standard scientific answer for how goal-directed entities work still involves pointing to internal mechanisms, following the tradition that can be traced back to Descartes, Hobbes and Newton. For example, how can we explain the way a homing torpedo, a classic mechanical goal-directed device, seeks its target? Most explanations would turn to internal feedback mechanisms inside the device. This is exactly what cyberneticists did in the mid-20th century, like the Mexican physician Arturo Rosenblueth. They argued that a homing torpedo uses feedback mechanisms to direct itself, detecting the sound of the target ship and responding when the sound fades by turning in the direction where it is louder. In a similar way, internal mechanisms are also used by contemporary biologists to explain the goal-directed behaviour of organisms. Consider a dung beetle. When it enters a dung pile, a beetle will sculpt some of the dung into a ball. To escape rivals who might steal the ball, the beetle stands on top of it and rolls it away from the pile in a straight line. If it strays from a straight path, the beetle risks accidentally circling back to the pile, where it will encounter competition again. Anatomical studies have revealed that a complex mechanism in the beetle’s brain is involved in guiding its movements. From this perspective, the dung beetle’s goal-directed behaviour – moving in a straight line away from the pile – can be fully explained by some mechanism buried inside its brain. Such mechanistic approaches have dominated contemporary thinking on goal directedness. The image of the Milky Way is a ‘light field’ that the beetle can use to orient its movements The explanatory power of the mechanistic tradition is undeniable. But notice that these explanations of teleological phenomena are incomplete. The feedback mechanisms inside a homing torpedo have no information about the location of the target ship. That information is present only externally, in the ‘sound field’ generated by the target ship. And the mechanisms inside a beetle’s brain have by themselves no information about whether the beetle is moving in a straight line. Instead, beetles rolling their balls away from dung piles are guided by something that is not only external but light years away: the Milky Way galaxy. The image of the Milky Way is a ‘light field’, one that the beetle can use to orient its movements. The beetle’s brain mechanisms are critical parts of the causal chain, but they alone can’t tell a straight line from a very slightly curved one. When it comes to explaining ‘goals’, the mechanistic approach has a serious limitation. Mechanisms are still important. They explain how goal-directed entities move and change, and how they execute decisions. But internal mechanisms viewed in isolation have no information about external goals. They can’t fully explain how an entity can persistently move toward its goal, even after it deviates. Mechanisms respond and execute; fields guide and direct. So far, we have considered relatively simple examples. A more challenging case for field theory involves the development of embryos. To all appearances, embryos seek their adult form guided by internal genes, not an external field. Think of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, one of the most well-studied animals in scientific research. The mother fruit fly guides the earliest development of her growing embryos, but soon the process seems to proceed almost autonomously, as the embryo partitions itself into segments and then into body regions, with limbs, mouth, and other parts forming later. How does it do it? No information about the overall architecture of these body parts is present in the cells and tissues of the parts themselves, or in each organism’s genes. Once again, the answer requires looking outside. Guidance is external, but not in the way you might think. It is not external to the entire embryo, but external to each body part. Guidance comes from ‘morphogenetic fields’ that are set up by the embryo itself. It is these fields that supply the cells contained within them with guidance about what to do: where to move, what to secrete, when to divide. These fields are composed of molecules, produced by genes deep inside an embryo’s cells, but the genes are not the source of guidance. They are just factories. And the molecules they manufacture combine to produce a chemical field around the growing body parts, directing their behaviour. This is where the notion of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ becomes trickier. This field is inside the embryo, of course, but is present over a broad area, outside the target cells and tissues, omnipresent and ready to correct them when they inevitably deviate. Consider a question that still perplexes biologists. Why are your arms pretty much the same length? Genes inside the cells of a developing left arm have, by themselves, no information about the length of the developing right arm. This means that, unless tightly controlled, the cells in one arm might divide a bit faster than those in the other. This kind of variation occurs all the time in the development of organisms. If such variation is possible, then how do our arms grow to the same length? The answer is not yet known. One strong possibility is that some field exists – biochemical or even electrical – which is in touch with both arms, encompassing the cells in each. Such a field could persistently guide the growth process toward arms of the same length. At each level, large fields direct the smaller entities contained within them The simplified explanation above barely begins to account for the full complexity of fields in goal-directed systems. In embryos, there are multiple fields at the scale of the entire developing organism directing various tissue-level mechanisms inside. In turn, those tissues can also act as fields, directing the cells within them. And these cells in turn can also act as fields, directing various molecule-level mechanisms inside them, and so on. In the most complex systems, multiple levels of entities are nested within multiple fields. This telescoping of levels extends upward as well. Whole organisms are nested within local ecological fields, which in turn are nested within larger ecologies, and so on. What matters in these relationships – what makes goal directedness possible – are the spatial relationships among the nested entities. At each level, large fields direct the smaller entities contained within them. By now, some might have noticed the teleological elephant in the room: our theory seems to suggest that Aristotle was right to think that falling rocks intend to fall – that they have a downward-seeking goal or purpose. After all, according to field theory, a falling rock is an entity persistently guided downward by an external (gravitational) field. And if teleology requires nothing more than a field directing a contained entity, then field theory would suggest that a falling rock really is teleological. To virtually all contemporary thinking on teleology, this is an outrageous conclusion. We have two responses. First, not all instances of goal directedness are equal. A falling rock is among the simplest kind of teleological entity imaginable. It is minimally, negligibly, goal directed. Human intentions and purposes are among the most complex. According to field theory, historical and modern thinking on teleology has made an error. Much of this thinking assumes that teleology must be binary, that things are either goal directed or they’re not. We see teleology as something that comes in degrees. Second, allowing a falling rock to be somewhat teleological has the effect of drawing the life sciences and the physical sciences closer together, and we think that is a good thing. The very notion of a partition between them – with the life sciences allowing teleology while the physical sciences do not – would seem to imply there’s something about the life sciences that fails to be purely physical. We think that’s a mistake. What makes field theory unique is that it is the only modern explanation of goal directedness that locates the source of goal directedness outside of the goal-directed entity. Most other modern theories are mechanistic, and even those that aren’t still point to internal processes or internal organisation, which we argue cannot have the information necessary to direct. Though we know of no similar approaches to teleology, field theory did not arise in a vacuum. It has deep roots in the work of those studying the properties of nested, hierarchical systems. These studies stretch back almost a century and include research by social scientists (such as Herbert Simon), psychologists (Donald Campbell), biologists (Stanley Salthe) and philosophers (James Feibleman, Ernest Nagel and William Wimsatt). Although not all these thinkers are directly concerned with goal directedness, they explore the ways in which big things can affect little things nested within them, from societies affecting individuals to ecologies affecting species. This research has helped to explain the nature of hierarchical causation, how wholes affect their parts. Finally, we turn to the most speculative application of field theory: human wants and intentions. If we’re right, then things like human culture and psychology – alongside all goal-directed phenomena – also involve direction by fields. That would mean there needs to be a hierarchical structure to human wanting. And this structure does seem to exist. Looking down, our cells and tissues have the same nested structure as other multicellular organisms. Looking up, we are individuals nested within and directed by small social ecologies (marriages, families, friend groups, etc), which in turn are nested within and directed by larger ones (economic, political and cultural entities), and so on. This is a greatly simplified explanation; even within organisms, the complex nesting of fields is never tidy. Now consider the laws and legal systems that guide citizens into rough compliance. In this case, the ‘fields’ are the norms, expectations, forms of deterrence, and adjudication and enforcement systems that direct our wants and intentions, and therefore indirectly affect our thinking and actions. Just as Earth’s magnetic field acts on the turtle’s brain, telling it where to turn, the legal system acts on our wants and intentions from above. The same goes for the many economic fields in which we are immersed, guiding our preferences as workers and consumers. And the same also goes for the many social fields that contain us and guide us. These fields arise from partners, friends, families and the countless workplaces, neighbourhood groups, clubs and other social institutions in which we are immersed. The largest fields, like social and economic fields, are extraordinarily nonlocal, directing the wants and intentions of huge numbers of individuals over a large area. From this vantage point, human society emerges as a web of fields. People in a society, like cells in a developing organism, participate in multiple overlapping fields at the same time, which deliver different degrees of (sometimes conflicting) guidance. But that is not the end of the story. It seems that some purposes or goals originate mostly in our heads. Here we speculate that wants and intentions direct purposeful thinking, speech and action, and must therefore be fields, too, providing both the motivational oomph that gets these processes moving and the directional focus that guides them. My desire for a cup of coffee moves me to think, say and do the things necessary to get one. By ‘wanting’ or ‘intending’ here we are referring to a large category of what might be called affective states, all closely related to emotion, including preferences, cares, feelings, motivations, and so on. This view of the mind, which dates back to the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, posits that our wants direct everything we deliberately think, say and do. Hume called our wants the ‘calm passions’ because, for him, thinking, speaking and acting are purely passive processes, having no goals of their own. We take a similar view: when we deliberately think about, say or do something, it is because some field, some want or intention, has motivated or directed us. Fields, and fields alone, motivate and direct. Are we merely pawns pushed around by external fields, or are we free to make our own decisions? To explain how this works, let’s consider a simpler animal. A brief downpour might nudge a squirrel toward wanting to seek shelter. But the desire to seek shelter is the direct cause of the animal’s thinking and motor movements as it heads toward shelter, not the rain – the rain just triggers the desire. Field theory predicts that when squirrel brains are better understood, we will discover that the thought and motor mechanisms involved in seeking shelter lie nested within some larger wanting field that directs them. The squirrel case is interesting because, like us, squirrels initiate some actions almost entirely on their own, arising less from external triggers and more from internally generated wants and intentions. At any moment, a squirrel might choose to leap from branch to branch just for the exhilaration of near-flight. Field theory speculates that some large-scale pattern of neural activation, the desire for near-flight exhilaration, is a field that acts downwardly on the cognitive and motor centres enveloped by the field, causing the animal to plan, position itself, and leap. We propose that this same architecture underlies human purposeful behaviour as well. Our deliberate decisions are driven by wants and intentions, which take the form of large fields in our brains that direct our cognitive, speech and motor centres. These fields might consist of large neural circuits. And the goal-directed mechanisms they guide – thinking, speaking and acting – might consist of smaller-scale circuits embedded within them. Like the eddies in a rushing river, the smaller circuits are embedded within the larger flow. Each eddy has its own dynamic, but an eddy’s overall movement is directed by the larger river that envelops it. Likewise, thinking, speaking and acting have their own dynamic, like the capacity of conscious thought to construct narratives, or the capacity of speech mechanisms to retrieve words and formulate sentences. However, their focus, their purposefulness, arises from the wanting or intending fields in which they are embedded. These fields are our motivations. Our repertoire of wanting fields is enormous, far more diverse than the simple survival and reproductive drives envisioned in some simplistic biological models of intentionality. And they act across a wide range of time scales. An intention to throw a picnic directs a person to make a plan, invite others, collect supplies, travel to a park, and find a suitable spot. A desire for knowledge might direct a person to investigate, sign up for, and ultimately take an online course. A preference for a quieter life might direct someone to prepare for retirement over many years, so they can retire early. The picture is complicated further by the fact that wants are diverse, and sometimes conflicting, even on a single timescale. Owing to the complexity of human existence, we want many things at once. I both want that extra piece of cheesecake (because it’s tasty) and don’t want it (because I’ve eaten too much already) at the same time. I want to stay in school and see the world at the same time. The fields that direct us are interrelated, highly differentiated, and often in conflict. This is where the question of free will begins to emerge: are we merely pawns pushed around by these external fields, or are we free to make our own decisions? There is a very old line of thought, which has recently been reintroduced to the popular imagination by Sapolsky, that says we are not free. It says that all thought and action, indeed everything in the Universe, is fully determined by physical laws, and that this determinism is incompatible with free will. But this view, which sees determinism and free will as being at odds, is mistaken. According to a philosophical school called compatibilism, even if the world is perfectly deterministic, freedom is perfectly possible. Field theory is a kind of ‘compatibilist’ explanation of goal directedness. According to our theory, freedom is direction by the fields within us. There is a temptation to regard direction imposed on us from anywhere as the opposite of freedom, but field theory reminds us that many imposed fields are our own wants and are, therefore, quite literally, parts of us. And when wants originate inside us, they are our wants, and the decisions they motivate are our decisions, regardless of whether they are determined by the external world and the fields that make it up. In this view, freedom is not the total absence of deterministic causation – it would make no sense to be free of your own wants and intentions. In a very real way, your wants and intentions are you, and no one wants to be free of themselves. The freedom we all seek is the freedom to think, say and do what we ourselves deeply want. It is not to be undetermined or free of causes. What evidence exists for our theory of ‘wanting’ fields? The truth is that we are out on a limb, one that is both weak and strong. It is weak because there seems to be little positive evidentiary support, neurologically at least, for the notion that our wants manifest as large fields containing thought and action mechanisms. But the theory is also strong because it is not contradicted by existing research. Much is known in neuroanatomy and neuropsychology about the neural correlates of emotion. Less is known about calmer affective states such as wanting and intending. When it comes to motivations at a molecular level, large-scale neurotransmitter fields involving serotonin or dopamine could be the mediators of our wants and intentions. However, there are other candidates as well, from electromagnetic fields acting over large areas within the brain to neural circuits involving clusters of neurons that are not specific to any one neurotransmitter. Enough mystery remains to support a range of possibilities about how these fields might work. One of the most valuable aspects of our theory is that it offers empirical guidance. It suggests that researchers hoping to understand human wanting should look for large-scale structures – larger than the thought and action systems they guide. Experiments should seek structures with these systems embedded within them. Of course, field theory, like any theory about the physical world, could turn out to be wrong about how human wanting works. And that, too, is a virtue of the theory. In good scientific fashion, it sets itself up for possible falsification. It’s possible that our purposes have something deep in common with acorns and dung beetles Fields are an old idea but, to a world steeped in mechanistic thinking, they offer something new. They expand our explanatory arsenal, supplementing pure mechanism in a way that explains the otherwise unexplained. They help to answer one of the oldest problems in philosophy and science: why do things in the Universe appear to have goals or purposes? Field theory carries with it a message of unity, bringing together all teleological systems under a shared architecture, revealing a continuity in nature that has long been suspected, at least since Aristotle. Disparate phenomena, from physics to psychology, are unified under a single explanatory framework. The theory raises the possibility that our purposes have something deep in common with other goal-directed systems like acorns and dung beetles, as well as with even simpler ones, like self-driving cars and, yes, even falling rocks. We acknowledge there are problems to resolve. Fields are often elusive, invisible and intangible. In particular, the fields that guide us as people, the wants our consciousness is bathed in, are poorly understood. We see them only vaguely, from inside. Like gravitational fields, they seem to be everywhere and nowhere in particular. And like gravitational fields, they wield a mysterious power we have yet to fully understand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KEVINAA 129 Posted November 7, 2024 Share Posted November 7, 2024 43 Rhesus monkeys "escape" from bio-research lab in Yemassee, South Carolina — AP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,333 Posted November 7, 2024 Share Posted November 7, 2024 6 minutes ago, KEVINAA said: 43 Rhesus monkeys "escape" from bio-research lab in Yemassee, South Carolina — AP On a stage in Florida yesterday Vesper 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 9, 2024 Share Posted November 9, 2024 Pear and chocolate crumble Ingredients • 4 pears, peeled, cored and thinly sliced • 150g dark chocolate, broken into pieces • 2 tbsp caramel sauce Method Preheat the oven to 160C fan/gas 4. Place the pears in a medium-sized ovenproof dish. Sprinkle the chocolate on top, then add the caramel sauce and a splash of water. Scatter the nutty topping mix over the fruit and bake for 40 minutes or until golden and bubbling. Serve with custard, cream or ice cream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 9, 2024 Share Posted November 9, 2024 (edited) Drink of the week: Elderflower fizz by Dulse, Edinburgh “This drink highlights one of my favourite ingredients, elderflower,” says Dean Banks from the Edinburgh restaurant Dulse. “Its crisp, floral notes bring a touch of warmth to autumn gatherings. It’s light, bubbly and gives you that luxurious feeling, much like sipping champagne.” This recipe requires a bit of planning in advance, since a week of steeping is needed to get a full elderflower flavour. Ingredients • 400g sugar • 1 lemon, zested and juiced • 1g yeast • 10 heads of elderflower Method 1. Combine 800ml water with the sugar, lemon zest and juice in a large saucepan. Bring to the boil. Allow to cool, then mix in 1.2L water and the yeast. 2. Add to a sterilised container, mix with the elderflower heads and leave in a dark place at room temperature for 7 days. 3. Strain then pour into sterilised bottles. Chill in the fridge until ready to serve. Edited November 9, 2024 by Vesper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 9, 2024 Share Posted November 9, 2024 Tortilla de Patatas Ingredients • 250ml olive oil • 1 large onion, sliced into half rings • 1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into thick slices • Sea salt and black pepper • 7 large eggs Method 1. Heat 3 tbsp oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and cook gently for at least 30 minutes until all the water has been drawn out of them and they are soft, golden and very sweet. Lift out with a slotted spoon and drain over a bowl. Leave the oil in the pan. 2. Add the rest of the oil to the pan. It should be 2cm deep and hot enough that a small piece of potato sizzles. Add the potatoes, season and cook very slowly for about 20 minutes, moving them around regularly from the middle to the edges so they cook evenly. It doesn’t matter if a few break. 3. Once the potatoes are a light golden colour and tender, take the pan off the heat, lift out the potatoes with a small sieve and drain. Once drained, put the potatoes in a clean bowl. 4. Measure about 4 tbsp oil from the pan and put in a 28cm nonstick omelette pan. 5. Beat the eggs, season and add to the potatoes together with the onions. 6. Heat the oil in the omelette pan. Pour in the tortilla mixture and cook gently over a medium heat. Move it about to make sure the potatoes are evenly distributed, then leave to cook for 10 minutes. When the base is sealed and light golden, remove from the heat. 7. Place a large plate over the top of the omelette pan. Turn the two over together so the tortilla lands on the plate, cooked side up. Slide the tortilla back into the pan, uncooked side down. Cook gently for 5 minutes. The tortilla should bejust firm but creamy inside. Slide onto a plate to serve. Fulham Broadway 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,333 Posted November 9, 2024 Share Posted November 9, 2024 2 minutes ago, Vesper said: Tortilla de Patatas Ingredients • 250ml olive oil • 1 large onion, sliced into half rings • 1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into thick slices • Sea salt and black pepper • 7 large eggs Method 1. Heat 3 tbsp oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and cook gently for at least 30 minutes until all the water has been drawn out of them and they are soft, golden and very sweet. Lift out with a slotted spoon and drain over a bowl. Leave the oil in the pan. 2. Add the rest of the oil to the pan. It should be 2cm deep and hot enough that a small piece of potato sizzles. Add the potatoes, season and cook very slowly for about 20 minutes, moving them around regularly from the middle to the edges so they cook evenly. It doesn’t matter if a few break. 3. Once the potatoes are a light golden colour and tender, take the pan off the heat, lift out the potatoes with a small sieve and drain. Once drained, put the potatoes in a clean bowl. 4. Measure about 4 tbsp oil from the pan and put in a 28cm nonstick omelette pan. 5. Beat the eggs, season and add to the potatoes together with the onions. 6. Heat the oil in the omelette pan. Pour in the tortilla mixture and cook gently over a medium heat. Move it about to make sure the potatoes are evenly distributed, then leave to cook for 10 minutes. When the base is sealed and light golden, remove from the heat. 7. Place a large plate over the top of the omelette pan. Turn the two over together so the tortilla lands on the plate, cooked side up. Slide the tortilla back into the pan, uncooked side down. Cook gently for 5 minutes. The tortilla should bejust firm but creamy inside. Slide onto a plate to serve. Going to try this Vesper 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 9, 2024 Share Posted November 9, 2024 The best ‘own-label’ wines and how to find them They can be the best value bottles on the high street, but decoding the labelling can be difficult https://www.thetimes.com/article/62633993-2e07-4ca1-b179-cfe700bad82b Own-label wines offer some of the best value on the high street, so it is no wonder sales are soaring. But getting to grips with them is the devil’s own job. “Own label” simply means the bottle bears the name of the supermarket or wine merchant that sells it, rather than the producer who made it — but within that, there are often several tiers to negotiate. At Marks & Spencer the top level is the navy and gold liveried Collection range, with a particular good ’un in the shape of Susana Balbo’s bold, black chocolate-stashed, French oak-aged, Uco Valley 2023 Malbec (£12). The middle-rung bottles are the obvious-sounding Classics, while the brightly labelled, cheaper Expressions collection of unfamiliar single-variety wines brings up the rear. On top of all that, there is also a Found range, full of unexpected varieties. Confused? I certainly am. And it’s no simpler at Waitrose. “On the QT” is a quirky yet tasty limited-edition top tier followed by No 1, a newish top dog range of “world-class wines” which includes Marcus Huber’s 2023 No 1 Grüner Veltliner (£11.99), a lovely, leafy, white pepper-scented mouthful, best bought on Thursday when it drops to £8.99. The lowest tier here is the Blueprint floral label featuring ordinary, everyday wines, mostly sub £8. Then there is also a Loved & Found range, full of lesser-known grapes and regions. I’m not certain all these different, confusingly titled wine tiers help drinkers to navigate the wall of wine in supermarkets. The behemoth Tesco has just finished its biggest range review in 15 years, revealing 100 new wines but thankfully just one top tier of its Finest own-label wines, with a brilliant supplier or two such as La Chablisienne co-operative (see star buys). It is the same at Sainsbury’s with its top-tier Taste the Difference selection chugging on, alongside the small-parcel, revolving Discovery collection. Unsurprisingly the non-profit Wine Society has a cracking own label collection. Take your pick from The Society’s Austrian Red (see star buys), or trade up to one of the finer Exhibition wines. Testimony to the Society’s buying power is the blend made for it by the leading Soave Classico producer Pieropan. The lovely white almond and golden plum-stashed 2023 The Society’s Exhibition Soave is garganega led but topped up with trebbiano di soave and worth every penny of £14.50 (thewinesociety.com). Check out Majestic’s superior Definition range too, especially the fragrant, deliciously dark-hearted 2020 Definition by Majestic Margaux (£27.99), blended from declassified barrels from a top château. From left: Extra Special Crémant de Loire Rosé; Berry Bros & Rudd Bourgogne Côte d’Or Pinot Noir; Finest Chablis Premier Cru; The Society’s Austrian Red Top own-label bottles Extra Special Crémant de Loire Rosé, France 12 per cent, Asda, £8.50, down from £11 Cheapest price all year for this elegant, non-vintage, redcurrant and red apple-licked classy, pink Loire fizz. 2022 Berry Bros & Rudd Bourgogne Côte d’Or Pinot Noir, France 13 per cent, bbr.com, £26.50 Gorgeous, gamey, richly fruited Chorey les Beaune pinot noir from burgundy whizz Benjamin Leroux. • Pinot noir: the best lighter red wines 2021 Finest Chablis Premier Cru, France 12.5 per cent, Tesco, £22 Keenly priced, authentic, steely, stylish, saline, superior 1er cru from the awesome La Chablisienne co-operative. 2022 The Society’s Austrian Red 13.5 per cent, thewinesociety.com, £9.50 The Mantler family’s brilliant, bright, bouncy zweigelt is a scrumptious, spicy, forest floor-fruited mouthful. From left: Vanita Negroamaro; Setanera Merlot; Muscadet Sèvre & Maine sur Lie; Matusalem Very Old Sherry This week’s best buys 2023 Vanita Negroamaro, Italy 14 per cent, Co-op, £8 Unoaked yet a wonderfully rich, beefy, warming winter red from hot, arid Puglia’s negroamaro grape. 2022 Setanera Merlot, Italy 11 per cent, Tesco, £5.50 Dirt cheap, ripe, juicy Abruzzo coast merlot with masses of simple but satisfying black and red berry fruit. 2023 Muscadet Sèvre & Maine sur Lie, France 12 per cent, hhandc.co.uk, £12.85 Forget white burgundy, scoop up this tongue-tingling, lemon twist and citrus blossom La Chauvinière charmer. Matusalem Very Old Sherry, Gonzalez Byass, Spain 20.5 per cent, Booths, £22, down from £24 Start Christmas early with this magnificent, sweet, figgy, spiced black moscatel raisin 30-year-old sticky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 9, 2024 Share Posted November 9, 2024 Mason’s Arms restaurant review: ‘Cooking out of the top drawer’ Can you tell an urban pub in the country from a country pub in the city? At the end of the day, this is just a gorgeous old building with open fires, nooks and crannies https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/giles-coren-masons-arms-blue-stoops-restaurant-review-g9njm7dwz Giles Coren; The Mason’s Arms, Oxfordshire: “A bang-on-the-money modern country pub” ‘Ooh, I could go a pint of Double Diamond right about now,” said literally nobody, ever. Certainly not since the beer that “works wonders” was discontinued in 1996, long after falling into mockery, shame and disrepute. First created in 1876 by the Midlands brewery Allsopp & Sons, by 1958 Double Diamond “Burton Pale Ale” had become the bestselling bottled beer in Britain and soon after that started to be served from the keg (a pressurised tin, rather than a beer barrel) in British pubs. This, for people like the Campaign for Real Ale, was the exact moment that everything started to go wrong. It was a time of fags and darts and men only in the public bar, smoking Woodbines and talking about birds and the Munich air disaster while tanking up on the first of the fizzy mechanical beers, in this case from taps marked with two glowing red and orange Ds. But there was Watney’s Red Barrel too, and Skol (also an Allsopp brand) and Harp, created in 1960, which “stayed sharp to the bottom of the glass”. Like that was a good thing. The pressed potato, mussel velouté at the Blue Stoops: “A fish-on-carbs construction involving an inch-thick girder of confit potato supporting a row of plump mussels” But then in the 1970s and 1980s came the big European lagers, the Heinekens and the Hofmeisters, and by 1996 it was all over. Last batch of Double Diamond brewed; no tears shed. Except by Prince Philip, whose second favourite pint it was said to be (after a nice Boddingtons). So it was no surprise to see the late duke’s step-granddaughter Laura propping up the bar (well, sitting in the dining room) when I dropped into the Blue Stoops on Kensington Church Street for a pint of the first Double Diamond to be sold in a pub for 28 years. It’s here because the five-times great-grandson of the founder, Samuel Allsopp, a former fund manager called Jamie, has decided in his post-City years to get the family beer business out of the deep freezer. He’s been going back to 300-year-old recipes, has a pale ale, an India pale ale (IPA) and a pilsner out, as well as the Double Diamond (reframed as a modern “session” IPA), and has now, obviously, opened a pub, the first new Allsopps boozer in 90 years. It is modelled on the original Blue Stoops in Burton-upon-Trent, where his five-times great-grandfather is said (at least by his own website) to have brewed the first ever IPA, in a teapot, in 1822. The Blue Stoops: “The vibe was retro, the food was good, the beer and wine were terrific, the bill was modest” This Blue Stoops is not in Burton-upon-Trent, however, it is in Notting-upon-Hill. Because otherwise you wouldn’t get London’s most instantly recognisable chef, Fergus Henderson, and his equally unmissable wife, Margot, dropping in for a jar, as they were when I went in last week. Or Laura Lopes (née Parker Bowles), sister of my mate Tom and daughter of your Queen Camilla, chomping on wild mushroom tagliatelle and Old Spot pork chops with her children (I’ve no idea what they ate, I just said a quick hello, but I’m putting the dishes in for atmosphere). Or even, let’s face it, me. You wouldn’t have had Charlie McVeigh, founder of the Draft House pub group, consulting on the development either, or Lorcan Spiteri of Caravel (himself scion of a great catering family) devising the menu. And it wouldn’t have been simply heaving with wealthy friends of mine — old school pals, Groucho muckers, hacks, toffs — having an absolutely marvellous time. The Mason’s Arms, Clanfield But, crucially, not spending an awful lot of their vast hordes of money on the food. Because the headline on the Blue Stoops for me is that it is very good and not very expensive. After a pint of the Allsopp’s pale ale (delicious) and a pint of the IPA (delicious) and a half of the Double Diamond (delicious — have you noticed that I think all beer is delicious and thus there is no point asking me what I really thought of any of it?), I slopped over to the cosy dining room and flopped into a comfy booth with my old pal Sam Pearman (owner of lots of pubs but not this one) and my cousin Linda Agran — who swiftly flipped the booze focus to an elegant chardonnay — and we got down to ordering. We had a pile of excellent Carlingford oysters with shallot vinegar (£4 each), anchovies on toast with a very Fergus-y parsley and shallot salad on top (£8) and then a slightly fancier fish-on-carbs construction involving an inch-thick girder of confit potato supporting a row of plump mussels, like those photos of workmen eating their lunch on construction sites high above New York in the 1920s, all drenched in a rich, foaming velouté (the mussels, not the workmen). Then braised Hereford rib cap, rich and chocolatey, with wet polenta (£22); a nice bit of cod on pepperonata and chickpeas with aïoli (£22); and a really wonderful chicken, leek and black trompette pie, the fungus giving crunch and autumn heft to the filling, the crust brown and mottled and buttery for smashing into the juices, and an absolute steal in this part of town, or anywhere, at £21. Oysters at the Mason’s Arms The chat was loud, the music was swing, the vibe was retro, the food was good, the beer and wine were terrific, the bill was modest and the whole thing was, in short, like London pubs never really were, despite what anyone says, until about last Tuesday. Sam, whose Cubitt House group operates such terrific London pubs as the Barley Mow in Mayfair, the Princess Royal in Westbourne Grove and the Grazing Goat in Marylebone, told me he had a look at this place for himself when it came up. “But it’s a bit small,” he said, leaning back, stretching his own 6ft 4in frame, cracking his knuckles and spreading his wings along the back of our booth. “You know, for the sort of thing we want to do. But it’s perfect for this.” And he’s right, it is a brilliant little pub trying out great new things and an excellent spot from which to relaunch an empire. The Mason’s Arms’ half a roast chicken with onions and bacon And speaking of empires, Sam actually has two. Because there is a Cotswold-based wing as well as the London HQ, consisting of the excellent Double Red Duke in Clanfield, Oxfordshire, and now the 16th-century Mason’s Arms, right across the road from the DRD, which Sam initially bought, “because I had my eye on its car park”, but has also turned into something special, if not entirely unheard-of in these parts: a bang-on-the-money modern country pub which is folksier than the Duke, more muscular in the menu, and thus even more my sort of thing. Weary satirists might call the style “Notting-Hill-on-the-Wold”, but after a trip to the Stoops (and many others) it’s getting hard to say who is aping whom. Can you tell an urban pub in the country from a country pub in the city? At the end of the day, it’s just a gorgeous old building with open fires, nooks and crannies, young staff, well-dressed punters with small, glossy dogs and cooking right out of the top drawer. We went after a long local walk which took us quite spookily through the very heart of Downton (nearby Bampton turns out to have been the location for most of the village scenes in Downton Abbey and was full Americans in pastel-coloured rainwear taking photos of themselves in front of the church, shops, trees, cowpats etc), and tucked into a regal Saturday lunch spread. “The ox cheek pie came with a moat of parsley sauce” Most of it came from a blackboard propped up for us on an ancient stone windowsill. There were more oysters (natives this time, at £5.50 a pop); half a pint of prawns in a pewter pot (£10); a venison sausage roll (£6); four chipolatas with a grain mustard sauce (£6); lush, dark, sticky fried pig’s head in plum sauce (£8); a firm country pâté studded with cornichons and peppercorns (£9); and ceps on toast with roasted bone marrow (£12). Then an ox cheek pie (£20) with a moat of parsley sauce, half a roast chicken with onions and bacon from the main menu and a couple of brilliant smash burgers. Alas, when I asked at the bar for a pint of Double Diamond by Allsopp’s, they looked at me kind of funny and said, “What about a pint of Hawkstone by Jeremy Clarkson?” “Clarkson?” I replied. “Not sure I know the family. Are they new to brewing?” The Blue Stoops 127-129 Kensington Church Street, London W8 (020 7123 7929; thebluestoops.com) Cooking 7 Beer 8 History 8 Score 7.67 Price Pint and a pie, £30. The Mason’s Arms Clanfield, Oxfordshire (01367 604600; masonsarmsinn.com) Cooking 7 Interior 8 Location 8 Score 7.67 Price Pint and a pie, £30. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 13, 2024 Share Posted November 13, 2024 (edited) Is the party over for Berlin’s famed techno clubs? Berlin’s beat goes quiet as techno clubs close their doors Watergate will shut for good at new year, and as gentrification erases the city’s gritty appeal, officials are struggling to stop others following suit https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/berlins-beat-goes-quiet-as-techno-clubs-close-their-doors-pk0z3vz99 The Watergate nightclub, on the banks of the River Spree in Berlin, has boomed out the hypnotic beats of drum machines for decades. But in a few weeks the music will fade out for good. With its views of the river and the Oberbaumbrücke, Berlin’s famous, castle-like bridge, the club could be redeveloped as a luxury apartment block after it permanently closes its doors at the end of the year. It is not the only nightclub that is struggling in the city known as Europe’s techno capital. Renate, another famous club in Friedrichshain, across the river from Treptower Park, has failed to renew its lease beyond next year. According to a new survey by the Clubcommission, an association of nightclubs, 46 per cent of Berlin’s 150-plus venues are considering closing down permanently in 2025. That is twice the number recorded in a previous survey in February. The city’s nightlife is under “enormous pressure” from “falling numbers of visitors, rising costs and a lack of government support”, the association said. Its member survey found that more than half of the clubs had fewer visitors than a year ago and had recorded declining profits. After the advent of techno in the 1980s and early 1990s, Berlin provided ideal conditions for a rampant nightlife. In the period after reunification, abandoned factories and buildings were transformed into party venues and supercharged the blossoming techno scene. Watergate’s location, just on the East Berlin side of the former border, used to be “completely dead”, one early resident DJ recalled in a promo video for the club’s ten-year jubilee in 2012. Another noted it was “really ghetto, riddled with bullet holes and graffiti everywhere”. The grittiness became a hallmark of Berlin’s nightlife and made clubs like Berghain, part of a converted power station with a notoriously tough door policy, world-famous. High-profile DJs and cheap flights encouraged party-seekers from across Europe and beyond to flock to the city every weekend. But as Berlin turned into a glamorous European metropolis, the cheap rents expired as investors began to eye up the lucrative profits from short-term and luxury lets. Clubs have seen their rents increase and some have had their leases cancelled. After the Covid-19 pandemic, many venues struggled further. “Berlin’s tourism has still only recovered to the level of 2015, and changes in consumption behaviour among young people and staff availability make it harder to generate income,” says Lutz Leichsenring of the Clubcommission. As the music scene suffers, Berlin officials are acutely aware they risk losing an important economic draw. A spokesman for the local culture ministry said nightclubs were still the beating “heart chambers of this city”, enticing three million tourists annually. Berlin’s culture minister, Joe Chialo, a former musician and record-label boss, is injecting money into initiatives and events, and plans to hold regular round tables with club representatives. But disputes and stand-offs with private landlords are out of the administration’s reach, the ministry said. Leichsenring is encouraged by the co-operation of officials but notes that cuts to Berlin’s culture budget and a planned motorway extension that could obliterate several nightclubs are big challenges. Watergate’s management are not convinced that the problems can be solved with money. They may simply mark changes in consumer habits, Ulrich Wombacher, the club’s chief executive, told Berliner Zeitung. “Berlin’s corner pubs no longer exist … Why shouldn’t clubs also be a temporary phenomenon?” he says. On Friday Watergate will kick off several weeks of farewell club nights, featuring DJs such as Sven Väth and Charlotte de Witte, culminating in a finale on New Year’s Eve. “The party is over — long live the party,” the venue declared in announcing its closure. Edited November 13, 2024 by Vesper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 14, 2024 Share Posted November 14, 2024 Can Le Veau d’Or Turn Back Time? It’s Trying. An Upper East Side celebrity hangout of the past has been lovingly recreated by the Frenchette team. But it’s hard to keep the present from intruding. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/dining/restaurant-review-le-veau-dor-nyc.html The new Le Veau d’Or has resurrected many dishes from the old menu, like this homard macédoine, a lobster served in its shell.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times When the writer Robert Gerber moved to New York in 1979, he met an artist named Andy Warhol and a wealthy socialite named James Mellon Curley. The three of them, always looking for a good party, became fast friends. Their evening routine included a drink in the Plaza hotel, dancing at Studio 54 and dinner at Le Veau d’Or, a jewel box of a French restaurant on the Upper East Side covered in wood panels and a homey painting of a sleeping calf. There were more famous French restaurants nearby, like La Grenouille and La Caravelle, yet this one drew guests like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Orson Welles. Le Veau d’Or, which opened in 1937, “was much smaller and much less pretentious,” recalled Mr. Gerber, 69. “You could go here and have a great French meal for much less money.” As the bistro scene moved downtown, Le Veau d’Or became more passé than posh — until this past July, when it was reopened to great fanfare by the chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, best known for their dynamic, perennially packed neo-bistros, Frenchette and Le Rock. I recently met Mr. Gerber at the new Veau d’Or, where he was excited just to be back. Le Veau d’Or opened in 1937 and drew many celebrity guests, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.Credit...Le Veau d’Or The new owners sought to refurbish the restaurant — restoring its checked tablecloths and wood paneling — but not redesign it.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times It was the same, low-slung dining room, he observed, but with shinier red banquettes, crisper checked tablecloths and cute touches like calf-shaped creamers repurposed as miniature planters. He loved the duck, whose skin crackled like a potato chip and sang with peppercorns, and the lobster, served chilled in its shell with tiny cubes of radish and fennel. But the place somehow felt different, he said. It wasn’t as quiet. He didn’t see many people he knew. Le Veau d’Or wants to be timeless: a restaurant both for its former regulars and for those who have never heard of it until now. And the owners say they hope to achieve this not by overhauling the place, but by restoring it. The wood panels have been refurbished. The checkered floor pattern from the 1950s is back. Even the food comes from menus past, and includes those classically French dishes that have fallen out of fashion in modern bistros, like tripes à la mode, drenched in a lush Calvados and cider sauce, or tête de veau ravigote, poached calf’s head with a tart, mustardy sauce. “We wanted to keep it intact but refresh it,” Mr. Nasr told me. “Give it a little buff, a little shine and let it breathe.” The chefs (from left) Riad Nasr, Charlie Izenstein and Lee Hanson have brought the downtown flair of Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nasr’s other restaurants, like Frenchette.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times How does one measure a restaurant against its predecessor without having visited the original? I tracked down several former patrons, dined with them at the new Veau d’Or, and asked them what made the old one so special. “It felt like eating in a little bistro in Paris,” said Daniel Halpern, a poet and book publisher. “It didn’t overstep itself.” Louise Grunwald, a former Vogue editor, said she loved the informal, “clubhouse” feel. Graydon Carter, the former editor in chief of Vanity Fair, said the restaurant was “always half-full, in a nice way.” And the food? “Old-fashioned,” said André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater. “Good but not fancy, but comforting.” The new Le Veau d’Or is certainly not the same as the old Le Veau d’Or. One of the standout dishes is the duck, thickly layered with peppercorns and served with a cherry sauce.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times For starters, thanks to Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nasr’s cachet, the restaurant has become a hot reservation. Tables fill up weeks in advance. Dinner is not cheap: $125 per person for a prix-fixe menu of three courses and a salad (a wonderful one, with plenty of herbs and a sharp vinaigrette). The food, overseen by the chefs Jeff Teller, Charlie Izenstein and Michelle Palazzo, is more than just good — it’s precise and often fancy, with all the technical finesse these restaurateurs are known for. Your steak will never be overcooked, the béarnaise will always be glossy, and the escargots — bouncy, pastry-topped receptacles for garlic and herbs — will be as satisfying as any you’ll find in a Parisian restaurant. And just try not to be delighted when the lemon butter-soaked frogs’ legs arrive at your table, sizzling like a plate of fajitas. Or when the île flottante, an airy swirl of meringue suspended in cream, tastes like a superlative bowl of Lucky Charms. The cocktails vary from classic to playful, with plenty of homages to Le Veau d’Or menus past.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times Some dishes, like the oeuf en gélee, an egg suspended in gelatinized consommé, seem more nostalgic than essential to the menu.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times The wines are anything but old-fashioned. All are organic and French, and most are young, and the succinct list by Jorge Riera will make even the wine-clueless feel clued in. But there’s a palpable tension between the old-school sensibilities of the restaurant and the modern sensibilities of the restaurant group running it. At times, Le Veau d’Or feels too youthful for its older diners, and too old for its younger ones. Mr. Halpern said the new version “seems stiffer and kind of self-conscious of being the new Le Veau d’Or.” Mr. Carter said he couldn’t stand the noise in the dining room, which was so packed the night we ate together that I had to nudge people out of the way to reach the restroom. Even as a staunch Francophile, I could have lived without some of the more wistful dishes — like the oeuf en gelée, a soft-boiled egg suspended in a cylinder of gelatinized consommé that seemed more antique than exciting. Or Les Délices “Veau d’Or,” a trio of kidney, liver and sweetbreads saturated in a mustard and Cognac-spiked jus whose overall effect was unrelentingly rich. The prix-fixe menu — a nod to the old format and an effort to build more financial certainty into dinner service, Mr. Nasr said — allows diners to choose all three courses, but also means that a table of four ends up with 12 sizable and often heavy dishes, not including salad and bread. The restaurant’s calling card is a painting of a sleeping calf (a play on words — in French, “the calf sleeps” translates to “le veau dort”).Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times The service aims to be as intimate and charming as in a Paris bistro, and it often is. I appreciate how the servers drape napkins over your errant drips and spills on the table, like a playful scolding. But when the staff is really bustling, you may be forgotten. On one visit, we had to ask for our wine glasses to be refilled, and flag a server twice to get ice. I admire Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nasr’s desire to bring back a restaurant where you can linger leisurely without being hustled out, where the servers remember your name and the atmosphere is both stylish and serene. That restaurant sounds wonderful to me. Here is the reality: Because of all those lingering guests, the compact dining room often teems with people who have no place to wait. And it might be difficult to become a regular unless you’re willing to camp out on the restaurant’s reservations website. Le Veau d’Or has all the makings of a joyful and much-needed escape to a bygone era. Maybe when the buzz calms down, it can settle into the role. Le Veau d’Or NYT Critic’s Pick★★ 129 East 60th Street (Lexington Avenue) 646-386-7608 lvdnyc.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 14, 2024 Share Posted November 14, 2024 Business Lessons From Charlie Bigham Charlie Bigham is the man who gave the nation an alternative to ultra-processed ready meals, building a multi-million-pound business as we all rediscovered our appetite for quality home-cooked food. We sat down with Charlie to find out how he got started and what he’s learnt along the way. https://slman.com/life/interviews-careers/charlie-bigham https://www.charliebighams.com/ I've been in the food business for 28 years now – almost a lifetime, but I didn’t start out in this industry. My career began in management consulting at Amsterdam Consulting, which is now Accenture. After that, I worked for a smaller specialist firm advising on the development of art galleries, theatres and museums. It wasn’t long before I realised that I wasn’t great at working for other people. I didn’t like being told what to do, so I knew I needed to carve my own path. I’ve always loved cooking, eating and learning about food. When it came to deciding what kind of business to start, food seemed like a natural choice. My love for food goes way back to when I was 14. That’s when I started cooking. Back then, the culinary scene in the UK wasn’t as exciting as it is today. I remember cooking lasagna quite a lot – a dish I still make now – and experimenting with different ingredients. Living by the sea, I often caught fish and foraged for things like cockles and mussels, which has become fashionable now, but back then it was just about finding good food. When you work in a small company, your impact is much more visible – both the good and the bad. Starting any business is tough, and mine was no exception. But I always tell people that, while it’s hard, it’s incredibly rewarding if you’ve got the right mindset. One of the early challenges was finding a bank that would work with us, which was surprisingly difficult at the time. Securing premises was another hurdle, and the hardest part – then and now – is finding great people to join the team. When you’re small and unknown, convincing talented people to take a risk on you is tricky, especially if they’re leaving established careers. But I managed it, and I’ve had some amazing team members from day one. Even today, attracting the right talent can sometimes be a challenge. I think one of the reasons I’ve been able to persuade people to join me is my belief in what we’re doing. From the start, I knew I had a business idea that could grow, and working for a high-growth, independently owned business can be far more interesting than getting stuck in the corporate world. When you work in a small company, your impact is much more visible – both the good and the bad. And I’ve always been drawn to people who aren’t afraid to take a bit of a risk. There have been a few pivotal moments over the years, but for us, moving premises and scaling up has been a challenge. Because we make all our own food from scratch, space has always been tricky. Each time we’ve outgrown a location, it’s been a huge decision to move into bigger premises. It’s expensive – not just the rent, but fitting it out to meet all the food safety and hygiene standards. Each move required a significant financial stretch, but it’s paid off in the long run. We’ve done it three times now, and every time, it feels like putting everything on the line. But those are the moments that really push the business forward. We have to be careful not to get too caught up in food trends. Living in London, which is such a melting pot of new ideas, it’s tempting to follow the latest trends like fermented food or South Korean cuisine. However, our job is different. When we develop a recipe, we want it to have broad appeal across the UK. We sell in thousands of shops, so it’s important we focus on familiar dishes that resonate with a wide audience. Two of our most popular dishes are lasagna and fish pie. Our goal is to create the best version of these dishes and never stop improving them. Word of mouth is our number-one marketing tool. The best marketing we have is when customers recommend our food to friends and family, and then come back to buy it again. That’s why we’re so focused on making great food and constantly improving it. We’ve also done some TV advertising, including a recent cartoon commercial, and it’s been nice to see the positive momentum it’s created. Social media plays a role too, but I see it as part of a larger strategy. It’s not about focusing on just one thing. The most effective campaigns are those that incorporate multiple platforms at once. A 360º approach works best, and I leave that to the talented marketers on my team. Right now, the hardest thing about running a business is finding and retaining great people. We put a lot of effort into making our company a great place to work, and we’re recognised for it through various surveys. We now have a diverse team of 700 people, and we work hard to ensure everyone feels included and engaged. I decided to step down as CEO some years ago. We’ve now got a very good CEO who’s been with us for the last seven or eight years. I did my time, I guess. Now, I describe myself as the founder of the business because, well, no one can argue with that! My leadership style has changed over the years. Hopefully, I’ve stayed true to who I am, but as the business grows, you’ve got to adapt and stand back a bit – more influencing than directing. I try to listen more, though I could always get better at it. But I think it’s really important that a consistent set of values and behaviours runs through a business over time, so I hope I haven’t changed fundamentally. I’ve probably grown up a bit, learned a lot from mistakes along the way. Thankfully, I have an excellent work-life balance. The key is not worrying about it too much. I’m fortunate – I find it easy to switch off between work and my personal life. I don’t stick to strict 9-to-5 hours. If something needs doing outside of those hours, I’ll handle it, but it won’t interrupt my life. And since we’re a business that operates 24/7 – someone is always working, even if it’s just engineers keeping things running – you have to delegate and know when to switch off. Otherwise, you’ll go mad. If you’re going into the food business, make sure your product tastes fantastic. It’s amazing how often people forget that. It's vital in business to make mistakes. But it’s even more important to learn from them and move on. I don’t like dwelling on failures; I think it’s negative. My mindset is more, ‘Make the mistake, learn from it, don’t make it again, and move on’. Our goal for the brand is simple: get a little bit better every day. That’s our mantra. It’s not just about improving the food we make, though that’s crucial. We want everything to improve: our people policies, our technology, our engineering, all of it. We’re constantly working on around 100 different projects to make things better across the board. If we do that, attract and retain brilliant people, and keep improving our food, the results will follow – hopefully sales and profits will increase, but we focus on the inputs not the outputs. For aspiring entrepreneurs, I have two pieces of advice. First, don’t procrastinate. Just get going – life’s too short to hesitate. Second, if you’re going into the food business, make sure your product tastes fantastic. It’s amazing how often people forget that. And if I could give my younger self any advice, it would be: just get on with it and make sure you have fun along the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 14, 2024 Share Posted November 14, 2024 (edited) The Best New London Pubs For Winter Long nights, roaring fires, bottles of red – the appeal of a pub in winter never gets old. From Irish boozers out east to food-first places in the west, there’s a bevy of new boozers going big on that timeless allure… https://slman.com/culture/restaurants/new-pubs-london Walmer Castle Notting Hill The original Walmer Castle was bought by David Beckham and Guy Ritchie back in 2018 before it was sold on to become a Scottish-themed restaurant and whisky bar. Neither were a success, but husband-and-wife duo Jack and Poppy Greenall (also behind The Surprise in Chelsea) have turned things around with the addition of some smart interiors and a good chef. A top-to-toe refurb also introduced artwork by local up-and-coming artists. Food wise, there are simple but elegantly presented pub classics made with produce from British suppliers like the Ginger Pig and Flying Fish, alongside wines from indie producers. If you don’t fancy a meal, the bar is a great spot for people watching with a pint and glass of prawns – yes, that’s a fancy bar snack. 58 Ledbury Road, Notting Hill, W11 2AJ Visit WalmerCastle-NottingHill.co.uk The Ox Clapham The Rose & Crown in Clapham gets it right with a lively atmosphere, affable landlord and good food. The team has now opened a second site on Clapham High Street. Step inside to be greeted with dark wood panelling and vintage furniture that creates a cosy feel. There’s a mezzanine restaurant, a snug to hunker down in with a pint, and a rooftop terrace for warmer weather. Like at its sister establishment, the menu showcases seasonal British ingredients in inventive dishes like ox cheek toasties and a Japanese smashed burger with bone marrow kewpie. Hitting the retro pudding trend, desserts come from a trolley featuring a sticky toffee pudding topped with stout toffee sauce and clotted-cream ice-cream. Local beers and a tidy list of classic cocktails are further reasons to visit. 50 Clapham High Street, Clapham, SW4 7UL Visit TheOxClapham.com William IV Old Street This 200-year-old pub recently reopened after a refurb by Lee Godwin and Mike Harrington, the duo behind the Starman in Mayfair and Mare Street Market. The upstairs dining room has a contemporary feel with a regularly changing menu to match – look for dishes like mackerel with ravigote sauce and samphire, whipped smoked cod’s roe with tabasco and crisps, and hogget chops with anchovy sauce. Downstairs, you can order pub classics like hearty pies and steak and chips, as well as bar snacks like rarebit crumpets and fried pork belly. The wraparound bar has a selection of European and British beers, fine organic wines and rare spirits from the landlords’ private collection. There’s also a cracking Sunday roast and – we told you it was a trend – sticky toffee pudding to boot. 7 Shepherdess Walk, Old Street, N1 7QE Visit William-IV.com Nancy Spain’s Shoreditch Kerry-born brothers Peter and Nicholas O’Halloran opened this Irish pub back in February, and it’s quickly become a buzzy spot, partly thanks to a cool aesthetic and an endless supply of Murphy's – best enjoyed with bar snacks or a couple of dishes from the downstairs kitchen. There’s a small menu of crowd-pleasers, like burgers and steak sandwiches, with a string of resident chefs lined up for takeovers in the new year. There’s also live music every Wednesday to Sunday evening, from Irish folk bands to local talent. Plus, the team are set to open a second site in Monument on 22nd November, with £3 pints of Murphy’s on 26th November to celebrate. 128-130 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, EC2A 3AQ Visit NancySpains.co.uk The Hound Chiswick The Hound is the newest pub from restaurant group JKS – the team behind great London restaurants including Bao, Gymkhana and newcomer Ambassador’s Clubhouse. Over in leafy Chiswick, the team have partnered with publican Dominic Jacobs (whose other projects include The George in Fitzrovia and The Cadogan Arms in Chelsea) to bring an elevated pub experience to west London. Kitchen Table's James Knappett has devised a menu of British classics, including lasagne, venison pie, and flat iron steak with fries – all smartly presented and served with seasonal sides. The Sunday roast is as classic as it gets, while the drinks list is loaded with craft beers. 210 Chiswick High Road, Chiswick, W4 1PD Visit TheHound.London The Hero Maida Vale The group behind Notting Hill’s The Pelican and The Bull in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, opened a third site earlier this year. The Hero in Maida Vale is a four-storey space that makes the most of the building’s 1870s heritage. The pub itself does traditional British comfort food and cask ales, while the Grill Room specialises in sharing dishes cooked over an open fire. The space features high ceilings and an open kitchen with traditional detailing, returning the room to its original grandeur. On the second floor, the Library is the place to enjoy classic cocktails and vinyl DJ nights. From the current menu, we can recommend the huge scotch egg, cheese and pickle toastie, and reasonably priced steak and chips. 55 Shirland Road, Maida Vale, W9 2JD Visit TheHeroW9.com The Marquee Moon Dalston This summer, the team behind east London nightclub The Cause opened an outpost on Stoke Newington Road. Taking over the former Marquis of Lansdowne, the Marquee Moon has the look of a traditional pub and the feel of a Dalston bar. You could spend a while here – eating in the restaurant on the ground floor before moving to the basement with its killer hi-fi system. Here, local DJs and musicians perform until the early hours. Previous selectors have included Mafalda, Floating Points and Giles Smith. Back in the restaurant, there are east Asian-inspired dishes like chicken sandos, and zingy cocktails – try the Pandan Old Fashioned made with bourbon, clarified brown butter, chocolate bitters, and topped with a pandan leaf. 48 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston, N16 7XJ Visit TheMarqueeMoon.uk The Devonshire Soho Jason Statham is a regular, Ed Sheeran drops by for lock-ins, and landlord Oisín Rogers’ little black book is a who’s who of London’s coolest crowd. Only if you’ve been living under a rock will you have missed the biggest pub opening of recent times, but this one deserves the hype. Rogers (ex-Guinea Grill) has teamed up with Charlie Carroll (founder of Flat Iron) and chef Ashley Palmer-Watts (ex-Fat Duck) to create a classic London pub that’s warm, welcoming and thrillingly hectic. There’s food from the in-house butcher and bakery, and famously perfect pints of Guinness (the team get through around 200 barrels of the good stuff each week). Upstairs is the smart Grill Room, specialising in Scottish beef – dry-aged and butchered on site – creel-caught langoustines from Oban, day-boat fish, lobster and hand-dived scallops from Devon. If you’re struggling to make a reservation, elbow your way to the bar for pints, scotch eggs and toasties. 17 Denman Street, Soho, W1D 7HW Visit DevonshireSoho.co.uk The Butcher's Tap & Grill Chelsea Rumours swirled for a while about Tom Kerridge opening a second outpost of his popular Marlow pub in London. They were borne out when the celeb chef set up shop in a two-storey Chelsea boozer at the end of last year. Tucked away behind the King’s Road, The Butcher’s Tap & Grill sources its meat from places like Dovecote Farm and HG Walter, before ageing it in-house. Diners can order steaks, as well as other prime cuts of meat, cooked over the grill and served with sauces, seasonal veg and sides like homemade baked beans and chilli beef and cheese fries. There’s a nice selection of beers on tap, as well as wines from small European producers. 27 Tryon Street, Chelsea, SW3 3LG Visit TheButchersTapAndGrill.co.uk The Brave Islington Just a few months since closing his Islington restaurant 12:51, James Cochran is about to open a new pub around the corner from his original outpost. He’s teamed up with Seven-Eighths Group (the team behind The Hemingway in Victoria Park) to open The Brave, inspired by his mixed Scottish-Caribbean heritage – so expect some decent whiskies and rums behind the bar. The venue will be home to a dining area and various nooks for settling down with beers and pub snacks. The restaurant will showcase top-quality seasonal produce from around the UK. Look out for dishes like jerk-spiced chicken scotch eggs with scotch bonnet jam; crispy beef-fat hash browns with aged beef tartar; roasted and spiced Orkney scallops; and venison pie with neep-and-tattie hash browns. 340-342 Essex Road, Islington, N1 3PB Follow @TheBraveLondon Edited November 14, 2024 by Vesper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,225 Posted November 15, 2024 Share Posted November 15, 2024 The nature of natural laws Physicists and philosophers today have formulated three opposing models that explain how laws work. Which is the best? https://aeon.co/essays/on-seeing-the-laws-of-nature-as-a-recipe-or-a-news-report The Sun rises every day. Water boils at 100°C. Apples fall to the ground. We live in a world in which objects behave the same given the same circumstances. We can imagine living in a different world: a world that constantly changes, a world in which the Sun does not rise every day, a world in which water one day boils at 50°C, and at 120°C another day, a world in which apples sometimes fall from trees and sometimes rise into the sky. Only because we live in a world that displays stable regularities are we able to reliably shape our environment and plan our lives. We have an intuition that these regularities are due to laws of nature, but we normally do not interrogate what these laws are and how they work in any basic metaphysical sense. Instead, we assume that science not only provides these laws but also elucidates their structure and metaphysical status, even when the answers seem partial at best. In short, we assume that, thanks to science, there is a recipe of sorts for how the laws of nature work. You take the state of the Universe at a given moment – every single fact about every single aspect of it – and combine it with the laws of nature, then assume that these will reveal, or at least determine, the state of the Universe in the moment that comes next. I refer to this as the layer-cake model of the Universe, which dates back to the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes. Not long after Descartes embraced the idea of a deterministic universe, Isaac Newton presented a mathematical law for gravitation, which gave the concept a powerful quantitative update. The gravitational force on one body at one time is determined by the location of all the bodies in the Universe at that time; the state of the Universe plus the law of gravitation tells you how all bodies will move: a layer-cake model, indeed. The influence of Descartes and Newton on how we think about laws of nature is immense – and not without justification. It has helped to unify whole fields of physics, including mechanics, gravitation and electromagnetism. It is still so widespread in the scientific community, and it has such a distinguished pedigree, that scientists may not even realise that they subscribe to the layer-cake model at all. But the uncomfortable truth is that there are many aspects of modern physics that seem to provide counterexamples to the layer-cake model. To date, some of these alternatives have occupied only a rogue niche in physics. But they should be studied more deeply and understood more widely because they pose major challenges to our fundamental understanding of the Universe – how it began, where it is going, and what kind of entity, if any, is driving it. The first massive challenge to the layer-cake model, Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, appeared in the 20th century. The laws of nature that are core to the theory of general relativity, the Einstein field equations, do not immediately lend themselves to the layer-cake model at all. The difference can be seen in the structure of the mathematics itself. An equation that adheres to the layer-cake model describes the changes that occur in space in terms of the underlying reasons for these changes. For example, Newton’s equation for his second law of motion describes the acceleration of physical bodies in terms of the underlying forces causing that acceleration. The Einstein field equations, on the other hand, describe the very structure of spacetime as the change agent for moving physical bodies; in fact, most of the solutions to the Einstein field equations yield a spacetime structure that is incompatible with the layer-cake model. When faced with this challenge, physicists do something highly revealing: they specifically search for solutions to the Einstein field equations that comport with the layer-cake model, and they rule out solutions that do not comport with the model as ‘unphysical’ – as artefacts of the mathematics that do not tell us anything about reality, or, at least, not the reality we live in. Physics has many theories where the future seems to somehow influence the past In the case of general relativity, there are good reasons for doing this, but in other cases the challenge to the layer-cake model becomes harder to dismiss. In classical mechanics, for example, there is something called the Lagrangian formulation, which holds that, when moving between two separate points, A and B, a physical body will take the most efficient path. This does not look like the layer-cake model because, in order for the physical body to take the path of maximal efficiency, point B, which lies in the future, needs to be determined in advance. It looks, counterintuitively, as if the future is what determines the motion of the body in the past. As strange as this seems, it turns out that you can derive the familiar Newtonian equations for motion from the Lagrangian formulation. Because of this, scientists often treat the Newtonian version, which comports with the layer-cake theory, as reflecting the true structure of the world. The Lagrangian version is understood to be an interesting and sometimes practical – but never metaphysically accurate – mathematical reformulation. But the Lagrangian formulation is just the start. Physics has many other theories where the future seems to somehow influence the past. The peculiarities of quantum mechanics have led to the development of so-called retrocausal models. And such midcentury giants of physics as John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman developed a theory of classical electromagnetism that basically says that future charges send light signals into the past. Ido not claim that any of these alternatives to the layer-cake model of the Universe is correct, but they are worthy of deeper study. The door has been opened for an investigation of alternative ways of how laws act in the Universe. In current philosophy, the layer-cake model has been defended by the philosopher Tim Maudlin, a professor at New York University. In his book The Metaphysics Within Physics (2007), he lists two key metaphysical features: laws are primitive entities, and laws produce the future from the state of the present. In this context, ‘primitive’ means non-reducible to anything else, or standing on its own. Primitive laws thus exist by themselves, and they exist not as concrete objects, like tables or cars, that we can experience and manipulate with our senses, but rather as abstract entities, similar to numbers. An immediate problem arises: how can laws influence any physical object in the world? In principle, we face a similar issue with legal laws: how can these abstract laws that are passed by Congress influence our behaviour? But the answer is straightforward: once we get notice of a law and understand it, we can choose to abide by it. The fact that we can choose to follow the law means that we have freedom not to follow the law. Now it is said that the laws of nature do not influence or produce anything in the world Laws of nature are different. An electron has no freedom not to follow the laws (even if they are indeterministic), and, more importantly, it is utterly mysterious how laws as primitive abstract entities are able to tell the electron what to do. In order to mitigate this problem of how electrons are able to obey the laws, another conception of laws was proposed by the philosopher David Lewis, which has been dubbed Humeanism about laws, in reminiscence of David Hume. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume posed the following problem about the notion of causation. He illustrated the problem with the collision of billiard balls. When billiard ball A hits billiard ball B, which was initially at rest, we observe that billiard ball B moves after the collision; we say that billiard ball A caused billiard ball B to move. This seems to be unproblematic. At least, we know that, due to the causal relation between the two billiard balls, whenever billiard ball A hits billiard B, billiard ball B would move. But how does causation bind the motion of billiard ball A to the change of motion in billiard ball B so that billiard ball B always behaves the same when billiard ball A collides with it? For Hume, this question has no answer. We, as human beings, cannot directly observe this causal binding; all that we can observe is the constant motion of billiard ball A and the successive motion of billiard ball B. And that is all that we can be confident of saying about causation. Lewis took this epistemic conclusion and turned it into an ontological one. Not only do we not experience how exactly laws influence physical objects, now it is said that the laws of nature do not influence or produce anything in the world. The layer-cake model is utter fiction. Instead, laws of nature effectively describe what is happening in the world. They describe the facts in the world, like a newspaper article reports facts in the world. Therefore, to emphasise the main idea of this proposal, I will call it the newspaper model of laws of nature. The newspaper model is probably the most popular theory of laws of nature among professional philosophers, and it attracts a lot of active research right now. It is so attractive because it is metaphysically thin: there are no mysterious, unexplained relations of production as demanded in the layer-cake model. Laws merely summarise the history of physical objects. The newspaper model, however, faces its own problem. Since there is no causal relation binding objects in the world, there is no reason why billiard ball B ought to move when being hit by billiard ball A. It may just remain at rest or move without being hit or break into parts or just vanish into thin air. Anything goes. If that were the case, the laws of nature would constantly change because they describe changing facts in the world. And still, billiard ball B always behaves the same way, and the laws remain the same too. How does that happen? The metaphysical thinness has to be bought with Hume’s principle of the uniformity of nature. It is a primitive unexplained fact within the newspaper model that the world always behaves the same way; billiard ball B always moves the same way when being hit by billiard ball A, even if nothing tells billiard ball B to behave so. Lewis reiterated Hume when he wrote that ‘if nature is kind to us, the problem needn’t arise.’ In other words, just as in the layer-cake model, the laws of nature also remain the same over time and keep their structure in the newspaper model. Common sense would agree. The past determines the present, and the present determines the future For example, Newton’s laws remain as they were when written down by Newton, whether interpreted as producing the future or as describing the world. You cannot see from the formulation of the law what the metaphysical underpinning is. At least, not without more information. All scientific laws are compatible with the newspaper model, including Newton’s laws that tell us that the future state of the world can be calculated and deduced from the present state just as the present state was produced from the past. How can the newspaper model support a formulation of a law that looks like the layer-cake model? This is justified by the idea that Newton’s laws are the most efficient description of the world (within the domain of Newtonian physics), balancing simplicity and informativeness. It might be possible to describe the motion of the planets in a different way. For example, you may create a long list with the exact times and the exact spatial coordinates of the planets; such a list would be very informative (more informative than Newton’s laws are), but it would be too complicated. The best balance between simplicity and informativeness to describe the motion of the planets is exactly how Newton formulated his laws. Not all scientific laws are, in fact, compatible with the layer-cake model, which requires that the past state produced the present state and the present state produces the future. In order for this to make sense, Maudlin adds a third feature: the stipulation of a primitive flow of time independent from the laws. Common sense would agree. The past determines the present, and the present determines the future. But in physics and philosophy, a primitive flow of time is highly controversial. Some physical laws do not match this structure. The laws of retrocausal models of quantum mechanics (in which the future determines the past), for example, are clearly incompatible with the layer-cake model and with the idea of a primitive flow of time. The laws of special relativity do not fit the layer-cake model either, because they defy an absolute notion of simultaneity, which is part and parcel of Newtonian mechanics. As a reaction to this narrow scope of the layer-cake model, the philosopher Eddy Keming Chen and the mathematician Sheldon Goldstein, at the University of California, San Diego and Rutgers University respectively, as well as the philosopher Emily Adlam, at Chapman University, have suggested an alternative. Laws may be primitive, but they nonetheless ‘merely’ constrain the physical possibilities in the world. Call this the straitjacket model of laws of nature. No notion of production and no flow of time is required. All that laws do is to constrain what can happen in the world. In this way, we combine the advantages of the newspaper model with the advantages of the layer-cake model, because we acquire the generality of the newspaper model and a reason for stable regular behaviour from the layer-cake model. Now we have a metaphysical underpinning for retrocausal laws and the laws of special relativity because laws, in the straitjacket model, are primitive and govern the world by constraining what can happen. Still, the straitjacket model suffers from the same metaphysical issue that plagued the layer-cake model. The layer-cake model was not able to account for how laws produce new states. In a similar vein, the straitjacket model does not specify how laws can constrain what happens in the world. It seems again that abstract laws have to latch on to the real world to tell physical objects how to behave. How laws are able to do so remains unanswered. We seem to need a metaphysical glue to secure the stable behaviour of our world The possible implications for any form of law of nature are profound. The layer-cake model seems to be intuitively plausible – the present is determined by the past – but we found out that it requires that laws somehow affect the objects in space and time without being themselves located in space and time. Since the layer-cake model is too restrictive to capture other formulations of physical laws, like retrocausality and general relativity, the straitjacket model was developed. This model does provide a framework for retrocausality and general relativity, yet it suffers from the same metaphysical problem as the layer-cake model. The newspaper model, on the other hand, tries to introduce laws without any metaphysical baggage, and this seems to be a promising approach. Yet we seem to need a metaphysical glue to secure the stable behaviour of our world. Given all this, which theory of laws best explains the regularities in our world? If the newspaper model were true, it would be a constant coincidence that the Sun rises every day or that the water in your kettle boils at 100°C, as there is no metaphysical constraint on how objects can behave. In contrast to many of my colleagues, I therefore find the newspaper model pretty unconvincing for explaining stable regularities. The layer-cake model and the straitjacket model fare better in this respect. The advantage of the straitjacket model is that it is general enough to capture unfamiliar laws of nature, like those describing retrocausality. But this virtue comes with a vice: the straitjacket model is so general that any law of nature would fit in. The metaphysically interesting aspect of nature’s laws is not that they constrain physical possibilities, but how they do that. Even if it is up for debate, the layer-cake model broadly addresses that question best. This works wonderfully with billiard balls. There are conditions where the model just can’t explain how laws of nature produce the future, like retrocausality; but instead of seeking a single new overarching model, perhaps we’d be better off sticking with the layer-cake, after all, and developing a separate tailored account for each type of situation where that model does not fit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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